MattSavinar.netPlease Read Before You do a "Fast" or "Cleanse"!
By Matt Savinar, posted 08/01/2008
Going on a "fast" as part of a "cleanse" is all the rage in natural health circles. For instance, I found the following over at NaturalNews.com advocating people go on periodic cleanses:
Periodic fasting of one to ten days (or longer for experienced fasters) is a time-tested practice that furthers cleansing of the day-to-day pollutants from food and the environment, and also releases deeply held toxins that have been stored within bodily tissues for years or decades. It’s an invaluable means of augmenting the cleansing initiated by other methods such as exercise and an alkaline diet.
All animals have a natural instinct that tells them when to fast for the purpose of healing, yet we humans – consumed by our hectic, demanding lives of quick fixes and fast foods - have become exceedingly detached from our own innate wisdom. The very practice of fasting can help sharpen our awareness and reconnect us with our instinctive nature. There are several types of liquid and modified "fasts", with the water-only fast being the oldest, most natural means of cleansing the body. It is also the strictest and most difficult to follow; however, the internal cleanliness brought on by regular water fasts contributes to healthy aging as it continuously removes toxins from organs, tissues and the bloodstream, and helps prevent further toxic build-up. Source
The problem with this logic is that animals (including humans) evolved this instinct in a wholly natural environment where they were not exposed to thousands upon thousands of synthetic chemicals. The modest volumes of toxins they were exposed to were ones found in the natural world. Thus the body had evolved the necessary enzymes to dismantle and flush them out. Modern humans, in contrast, have massive volumes of highly toxic synthetic petrochemicals in their systems. If too large a volume of these synthetic chemicals are released in too short a period, the kidney-liver complex can get overloaded and the cleanser can be in for severe problems! Charles Poliquin - who has worked on tens of thousands of people at his clinics - explained this in a recent column. Emphasis mine:
Ever met those crazy people that swear by "cleanses" to detoxify their body? Well, now I'm one of them. My system has gotten a bit toxic as of late and I've been feeling the need to flush it clean. I've been exercising twice daily, working up a sweat, eating well and this is the final "stage" of my plan to get myself back to a healthier balance. I've even convinced the boyfriend (Drew) to join me in this last stage. I talked to a bunch of people at work about what cleanses they've tried, and the one that got the best reviews was the "Master Cleanse." It's cheap, simple to do and, from what I've heard, gets results. More at the LATOC Forum
Ok LATOC. I'm fessin' up. I didn't make it. Two days into the cleanse, and I folded. It was NOT GOOD. I felt wonderful Sunday morning, only to end up shivering cold, dizzy, exhausted and extremely pissed hardly two hours later. Drew and I were at eachother's throats for no good reason most of the day yesterday. I'm surprised we are still able to sleep in the same bed. It was INTENSE. This is gonna get a bit personal, but bear with me. This cleanse got me so out of whack in such a short time that I almost passed out in my alley carrying laundry home from the laundrymat yesterday. My boobs got super sore (wtf???) and I started spotting all strangely. In spite of flushing my system with a salt water mix and drinking senna leaf tea, I had no movements. Very unusual for me. I'm a regular sort of gal, you know?
Secondly, I started obsessing about loosing weight. I don't need to lose weight AT ALL. I lost a surprising amount over the weekend and actually saw the scale reading the same as my freshman year of highschool!!! Needless to say, my body has changed a lot since then and that's not a reasonable number for me. Only, I saw it and thought to myself, how skinny can I get? WTF!?! I have NEVER found myself thinking that way before!!! I was partly motivated by my trip back home/Chicago in April, just to be the hottest of my friends, but that's not a healthy thought either! That's not what seeing my friends is about and I KNOW IT! It's NEVER been about that. What happened? Therein lies the real reason I cut this thing off. I've seen friends slide into eating disorders through what seem like harmless behaviors. When I told Drew what I was thinking and how I was feeling, he couldn't believe it. I stay healthy, eat well and exercise to feel good, be strong and stay balanced. Source
Now fast forward a few days into the cleanse. Please make sure to note the sore boobs, the random outbursts of anger, and heightened feelings of self-consciousness (sudden tendencies towards anorexia) from a person who is normally of a very happy and healthy disposition. We store toxins in our bodyfat and in women a lot of toxins get stored in the breast tissue. So the sore boobs are not a surprise given what was happening in the body. In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the liver is believed to process one's anger. So angry outbursts are often considered a sign of an overloaded kidney-liver complex, which, as explained above, is exactly what your run the risk of developing if you attempt a cleanse when you're not working with a professional. Similarly, anorexic tendencies are most often found in women without secure and wide-ranging social networks. In TCM, feelings of social insecurity (which is what is at the root of anorexia) are believed to be a sign of weak or overloaded kidneys. A few days into Earl's cleanse, emphasis mine:
What Poliquin warns of is exactly what happened with a young woman over at the LATOC Forum who attempted one of these cleanses without the supervision of a practioner experienced in these matters. Here's an excerpt from her initial post describing the planned fast:
A cleanse was a great idea... a hundred years ago. The reason is, the average American today has to detoxify 500 chemicals a day. So a cleanse was a better idea when there wasn't so much pollution around.
One phase of detoxification is in the liver and one phase is in the kidneys. This is known as phase 1 and phase 2 detoxification. You need rich nutrient reserves before you do any kind of detoxification program.
Most people don't have enough nutrients in their bodies, so as they detoxify they actually get very toxic! Since they're also consuming low calories on their cleanse, the fat cells dump the toxins as they burn them.
So, basically, people today get more toxic because of the cleanse. They have to get rid of all that stuff, so they actually get worse from the detox. It's easy to make yourself sick with a cleanse.
Finally, unless you have a genomic profile done, you should never do a cleanse. You need to know which enzymes you have. You also need to have a comprehensive metabolic profile done so you'll know what it is you need to detoxify. For example, if you have toxic levels of aluminum in your body, the only thing that pulls it out is magnesium malate.
You need to know what poison you have in your body so you'll know how to get rid of it. You can't do that with generic, unregulated, over-the-counter "detox" supplements.
In short, if you're going to do a cleanse, only do it under the supervision of a well-trained functional medicine doctor. Otherwise you could do something very bad for your health. Source
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Fortunately, Earl the Girl is A) fundamentally healthy and B) wise enough to abort the cleanse rather than push through as many people would attempt to do. So she was able to recover from the negative effects of the cleanse pretty easily. But if you're older or if your body is particularly loaded with synthetic chemicals or your kidney-liver complex isn't quite up to snuff, you might not be so lucky. So if you're thinking about doing a cleanse make sure to consult with a professional! This is, after all, a process where potentially large volumes of toxic chemicals will be released into your bloodstream. It's not something to play around with on your own.
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